NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team now is targeting as soon as early September 2026 for launch, ahead of the agency’s commitment to flight no later than May 2027. “Roman’s accelerated development is a true success story of what we can achieve when public investment, institutional expertise, and private enterprise come together to take on the near-impossible missions that change the world,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who announced the update at a news conference on April 21 at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Roman will pair a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to survey deep, vast swaths of sky. While the mission was designed with dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets in mind, Roman’s unprecedented observational capability will offer practically limitless opportunities for astronomers to explore all kinds of cosmic topics. By the end of its five-year primary mission, Roman is expected to amass a 20,000-terabyte data archive.…